Kingfisher down, Mallya out of Forbes super rich list

NEW DELHI: With string of business ventures misfiring, the king of good times Vijay Mallya has moved out of Forbes' global rich list of 1,426 billionaires, while the number of Indians in this elite club has grown but with drop in their networth.

As per the annual list of world's billionaires for 2013, published by business magazine Forbes, India has 55 billionaires with a total networth of $189.1 billion. India had 48 billionaires with collective networth of $194.6 billion a year ago.

There are only three Indians in the global top-100. The billionaires list has grown from 48 in 2012 but stays at the figure of 55 as in 2011.

Forbes has ranked Mukesh Ambani, with a networth of $21.5 billion, as richest from India for sixth year in a row.Lakshmi Mittal, the second richest Indian has a networth of $16.5 billion, followed by Azim Premji ($11.2 billion), Dilip Shanghvi ($9.4 billion), Shashi & Ravi Ruia ($8.5 billion) and Kumar Mangalam Birla ($7.9 billion).Other Indians in the top ten are Savitri Jindal ($7.6 billion), Sunil Mittal ($6.8 billion), Shiv Nadar ($6.5 billion) and K P Singh ($6.3 billion).

In 2012, with a networth of $1 billion, Mallya was ranked 45th in Indian list and at rank 1,153 globally.The Indian super rich list pales in comparison with the billionaires from China (not counting Hong Kong) and Russia with 122 and 110 billionaires, respectively.

Justifying Finance Minister P Chidambaram's rich tax in the recent budget, the Forbes rankings of Indian billionaires shows that just 10 richest from the country together command a total wealth of over $100 billion. For academic interest, this amount is higher than the estimated fiscal deficit of about $95 billion for the financial year 2012-13.

Nation's fiscal deficit for the year 2012-13 is estimated at little over Rs 5 lakh crore or 5.2 per cent of the country's total GDP.

The global list of billionaires rose over 16 per cent from 1,226 in 2012 to 1,426 in the latest Forbes rankings of super rich. There are 442 Americans, 386 from Asia Pacific region, 366 from Europe and 103 persons from west Asia and Africa.